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jyosim writes "The Chronicle of Higher Ed got a briefing at RIAA headquarters on how the group catches pirates. They just use LimeWire and other software that pirates use, except that they've set up scripts to search for songs, grab IP numbers, and send out notices to college officials. They claim they don't target specific colleges, though many feel that they do."

I doubt they are 'targeting' any specific school, but I strongly suspect IPs resolving to unilag.edu.ng are handled differently then those resolving to yale.edu , where the students are more likely to just pay a settlement rather then wipe their arse with the notices...

I seem to recall reading somewhere that Harvard has never been hit with one of these RIAA money grabs. Most probable reason being that there is enough talent there to rip the RIAA to tiny ribbon sized shreds in front of the judge, which would pretty much end their extortion racket.

So, does that still hold true? Anybody at Harvard ever been hit with one of these?

Recently living on campus (you can see some of my previous posts.)Piracy quite rampant just like any other university, and the students have rarely been served although it does happen.

I agree that they figure high-profile university lawsuits are bad publicity, and Harvard does have many young lawyers anxious for a big win, and will not be easily intimidated, which is half of what the RIAA game is about.

Several of the Harvard students I know have a method of sharing files via a VPN type construct (wasn't rea

are you kidding me? harvard has the largest endowment of any school. most people going there arent strapped for cash, and from what I've read most receive aid too. either the family has more money than you know what to do with, or the students often get financial aid.. in any event harvard is not one of the most expensive ivy's based us news & world reports reviews and numerous other publications.if you are going to harvard shouldn't you be smart enough not to have a family you can't afford to support?

say what you will but somehow I'd imagine the industry is more afraid of the combination of happy to volunteer law students, alumnae, professors etc of harvard than UT austin; not to mention the extremely large bankroll and wealth in the general population there. the other question of interest is where did the top brass / lawyers for MAFIAA get their degrees.going lawsuit happy on the alma mater isn't usually looked upon to well. especially when on avarage harvard grads are a lot more likely to spend a who

Not to side with the RIAA and similar, but wouldn't you figure, if they have the power to use a copyright of a given item to sue you, that they also have the legal right to "distribute" said copyrighted material?

IANAL, but I believe that they would only be able to if that particular method is laid out in the contract with the band. Otherwise, the bands could sue them for breaking the contract AND copyright infringement.

That isn't how the whole music industry works. When any random band signs a typical contract with the "Big Nasty", they essentially own your soul. They own the music, possibly the band name, and likely the logo and art that go along with it... and they have the right to do pretty much anything they want with it. They are a predatory bunch. Imagine all of this, and THEN finding out that YOUR on the hook for production costs of your albums too. It should be a crime. Unfortunately, they have more money than Go

I hate playing devil's advocate, but if a band doesn't read AND understand their contract to realize they are selling their souls, they deserve what they get. Everyone knows big record companies are just trying to make money (and some small record companies) are going to do what it takes to make money. It's your own damn fault if you bought into it.

PS - It's pretty common knowledge among musicians that you are on the hook for production costs not to mention advertising and all sorts of other costs.

Recent court cases indicate that "making available" is not against the copyright law. The **AA would certainly like that to be the case, so they and they alone are able to "make available" and nobody else. To violate copyright, there has to be an actual copy made by someone.

Not to side with the RIAA and similar, but wouldn't you figure, if they have the power to use a copyright of a given item to sue you, that they also have the legal right to "distribute" said copyrighted material?

In which case, if you download the music from them (the RIAA), then it would seem (IANAL, etc.) that they couldn't possibly charge you with copyright infringement since they, the copyright holder, offered the MP3 for download. Or am I missing something?

Sounds like entrapment to me, like the mafRIAA is "making avaible" the same mp3s they are accusing people of downloading

My understanding is that they search for songs, not serve them...seeing as they usually sue people for serving and not downloading. So I don't think there's any grand kind of entrapment conspiracy going on. They're just doing what normal Limewire users do only capturing the IP address instead.

Of course, the lesson here is to either not serve or use an anonymous proxy (or several) if you'

...now try to prove that they set you up. Not to be pessimistic, I believe you, but big business knows big dirty tricks. They enlist armies of those schooled in the dirty arts and they use them on a daily basis, on a much greater scale than you do. Could you think of a bigger and better schemer than the cancerous offspring of Hollywood? Why is it so easy to launch bullshit-campaigns against people?

Easy answer: War [blackwaterusa.com] by proxy [slashdot.org]...or, to put it in/. terms, being an AC modded -5 troll and still getting away wit

If you RTFA then RIAA doesn't make the mp3s available for download. It searches them and then checks who downloads.

The RIAA maintains a list of songs whose distribution rights are owned by the RIAA's member organizations. It has given that list to Media Sentry, a company it hired to search for online pirates. That company runs copies of the LimeWire program and performs searches for those copyrighted song titles, one by one, to see if any are being offered by people whose computers are connected to the LimeWire network. --- The LimeWire software allows users who right-click on any song entry and choose "browse host" to see all of the songs that a given file sharer is offering to others for download. The software also lists the IP address of active file sharers. --- Using public, online databases (such as those at arin.net or samspade.org), Media Sentry locates the name of the Internet-service provider and determines which traders are located at colleges or universities.

They do however download (and perhaps unintentionally share as well) the mp3s that they're not sure are the right ones. I doubt that RIAA will sue it's own investigators for copyright infringement but on the other hand, they seem pretty desperate. I wonder about "unintentional entrapment" however.

Well the RIAA claims in TFA that they only download.The RIAA, in so far as they are also "making available", are making available with no clear demarcation of copyright, further complicating their liability well beyond mere "entrapment". So all those downloads from RIAA hosted files are perfectly legal. Making available man_on_the_moon.mp3 is no different than making available kennedy_moon_speech.mp3 whilst sneaking in a secretly copyrighted song into a title of a public domain presidential speech about put

Who said he would get hate emails from the general public. The public would adore him for speaking out. He would receive hate email from RIAA (possible even a couple of notices or so) plus hate emails form all those 'really poor artists' represented by RIAA.

In either case, he probably needs to do some deep self-examination to see why he stays at this job.

I often question why people would work at companies that have questionable business practices. I assume that it is similar to the reason why I work at a company that doesn't. (a) They gave me an job offer, and (b) they consistently provide me with a paycheck.

Sadly, there are not enough jobs to go around within companies who have strong morals and upstanding business practices. It is Supply/Demand... and when the demand for employees is highest in immoral organizations, it is no wonder why people end

Like article says, they ensure that the infringer is in the US before bothering to send a notice, but I'd be willing to bet there are some US schools too that they try to avoid spamming with notices.
Not so much selective targeting, but selective non-targeting.

While the process for generating both takedown notices and settlement letters is largely automated, the RIAA said that before each warning is sent out, a full-time RIAA employee reviews each case to make sure the claim is legitimate and that the alleged pirate is in the United States. Thanks to the speed and ease of the automated process, though, the RIAA is "able to identify hundreds of instances of infringement on a daily basis," according to RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth. She also acknowledged that the RIAA can tell only when a song is being offered for users to illegally download; investigators have no way of knowing when someone else is actually downloading the song.

As well as:

On listservs and in interviews, some university administrators have recently questioned the validity of some of these takedown notices because they say they do not have any record of a download at the named IP address at the specified time. RIAA officials said this is because investigators performed only a "handshake."

And the obvious problem that mediasentry still doesn't have a valid license to engage in this type of work. This is neither evidence of offering nor evidence of distribution, this is nothing at all to see here.

This still sounds like racketeering to me, they never did answer the question of why they're singling out Universities in general rather than everybody they "catch" if the evidence is what it is, then they shouldn't be capable of singling out the educat

And you think that the RIAA would follow the new EULA? Remember that they us a PI company that is not even licensed to practice in many of the states they do "investigations" in. Interestingly, they have not suffered any repercussions for breaking the law. Conclusion: They are above the law.

They don't need to use LimeWire -- it's just the Gnutella network, and that's all information LimeWire happily and freely provides to anyone on the network. Technically they could use (or are using) a custom Gnutella client.

Since when can a person be held directly responsible for activity that occurs on their IP address? The RIAA is throwing charges for crimes without sufficient evidence that the person they are charging committed the crime. There are a million ways an IP is shared or used by multiple persons. Without substantial evidence, the RIAA is merely throwing litigious paperwork around at tons of innocent people. When will our government establish a recourse for recurring wrongful litigious activity?
The ability to sue, blame, and then settle out of court is being so heavily exploited because lawyers know that most people would rather settle than pay the $$$ to prove themselves innocent.
We need to either:
1) Not allow settling, thus making false accusations apparent, and thus the obvious waste of our judicial resources. This would be the cause of an impending need to reform and disallow repeat false accusers.
or
2) Allow individual accusers or accusing bodies (such as the RIAA) a limited amount of legal cases, for which an appeal must be done to be allowed more.

The article details MediaSentry's tactics but wasn't there a bunch of fuss earlier this year on how MediaSentry may actually be illegal in some states because they don't have an investigator's license? Does this mean MediaSentry is filtering out schools from states where they can't investigate people from? Or are they still collecting everything they can and forwarding it on to the RIAA, which still seems illegal on their part.

It's pretty trivial with torrents, but it's probably less effective because there isn't a search mechanism that spans the "whole network". Finding people downloading / sharing a particular (predetermined) torrent or using a particular tracker is fairly easy, but it doesn't facilitate making an enormous sweep for "anyone sharing one of these hundreds of files".

I'm sure they can but if they want to see who is seeding/leaching they probably need to connect to the tracker (I'm not exactly sure how DHT works). Limewire essentially serves as a tracker for Limewire and they obviously don't care that MediaSentry IPs are trolling for sharers, but Pirate Bay, etc. undoubtedly would be interested and probably respond in some (hilarious) way. Maybe by giving MediaSentry bad IPs which then lead to the RIAA falsely accusing someone and getting a ton of bad press. Who knows,

Azerus has a section where you can see who is seeding and leaching. It shows IP info if I'm not mistaken. Can they not do this with Torrents?

Easily.

How does that differ from Limewire?

With a torrent there isn't any way to "see all of the songs that a given file sharer is offering to others", just that one. And in fact, most people only do a few torrents at a time, so even if the RIAA could detect them, it wouldn't sound very impressive. They'd prefer to be able to go into court and say, "Look at this list! This criminal mastermind was distributing 2000 files! But we're only asking money for the five that we actually downloaded."

"We have no capability of targeting any school at all," said the RIAA representative, who argued that there is a large "misperception" among university administrators that individual colleges are being picked on. "Technically we can't do it. We find what we find with this process, and that's what we send to schools."

Technically we can't do it? BULL***T! A simple filter that throws away all schools not A, B or C is very easy to create. It is possible that they CHOOSE not to do it, but it is technically possible.

I assume the RIAA are already polluting filesharing networks with fake files, so why not do the same?Create an audio file with the same name as a popular song, have the first 7-8 seconds or whatever is legal be the same as the song, followed by an oral essay that critiques the song.

Now, when they sue, not only will you have a bulletproof argument that the suit is without merit, you will have a good counter-suit on the grounds that they are trying to suppress legitimate free speech.

This declaration now that they just use Limewire (and other P2P programs it would seem given the lawsuits filed) with a few simple scripts is greatly at odds with their court declarations that their proprietary methods are the result of "tens of thousands of man-hours of development" and constitute trade secrets.

...according to RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth. She also acknowledged that the RIAA can tell only when a song is being offered for users to illegally download; investigators have no way of knowing when someone else is actually downloading the song.

This is why the RIAA has no legal case, and why they must resort to bluffs, threats, extortion, smoke, mirrors, and press releases.

The song file has to be downloaded by another unauthorized person (RIAA investigators don't count) for it to be infringement. The RIAA itself admits here that they have no way of knowing if anybody else has ever downloaded this song. To properly win in court they have to convince judges and/or juries that despite this complete lack of proof that they were infringed anyway.

Is it reasonable to assume that if a search for a particular song returns hits that it has probably been downloaded?

No, Mr. Troll! The song that a search returns could have gotten on that computer by many other methods (ripped from CD, loaded from a memory stick, downloaded from an authorized on-line music store, copied from a previous hard drive, placed there by a trojan) than being illegally downloaded.

In collecting evidence for those takedown notices, Media Sentry investigators do not usually download suspect music files. Instead, the company uses special software to check the "hash," a sort of unique digital fingerprint, of each offered file to verify that it is identical to a copyrighted song file in the RIAA's database. In the rare cases in which the hashes don't match, the investigators download the song and use a software program sold by Audible Magic to compare the sound waves of the offered audio file against those of the song it may be infringing upon. If the Audible Magic software still doesn't turn up a match, then a live person will listen to the song.

So they have to check popular songs audibly if they don't match their automated tests. It is quite likely that RIAA pays Mediasentry for work hourly or files searched. So I had an idea and propose we need the following tools: microphones, bored people, and lots of computers to host.

1) Figure out what music is currently quite popular.
2) Make your own covers of it without instruments. Sing both the lyrics and the melody with interpretive musicianship. The worse it sounds, the better.
3) Host as the file name.
4) ????
5) Waste their time!

IANAL but I don't think you could get in trouble for posting fake songs up. Technically, you could claim you're helping fight piracy while making Mediasentry's job harder. I imagine the in worst case they ask you to cease and desist. Perhaps someone more versed in law can say if this is valid.

Another option could be to simply use the band's name and make up fake songs with similar names to original songs with fictitious lyrics. This would replace step 2. Granted I believe they are solely looking for song titles.
Ben Folds - Rocking the Penguin
Beastie Boys - Ubuntu in Effect
Whitney Houston - OSX will save the day

That would only play right into their hand. The network would become useless because someone searching for songs by Amy Winehouse will receive thousands of hits for files of idiots humming the song "Rehab" instead.

You are correct that the easiest way to defeat the methods they deploy is to flood them with garbage, but how is the casual user supposed to filter out the garbage without The Man doing the same?

The closest analogue I can think of would be currency. The Treasury Department changes the design every few years because it takes a while for counterfeiters to, reverse engineer, develop copy techniques, and perfect methods for mass production. By the time that's complete a new bill is in circulation.

Acto TFA:=======If there is a match, Media Sentry investigators will then engage in a so-called TCP connection, or an electronic "handshake," with the computer that is offering the file to verify that the computer is online and is ready to share the song.=======If they're going so far as to verify that the "computer is online and is ready to share the song", then explain to me how they can make the sort of mistakes they do, what with some targets having not engaged in filesharing at all?Remember, if they ar

Put your own copyrghted material up, but name it the same as something that they are looking for.
Let their cronies download it in their "validation" sweep (the article didnt actualy say that they validate??)
Immediately have someone else download your copyrighted material from them.
Instant lawsuit against the RIAA, am I right?

"We find what we find..." suggests that many schools do a better job of protecting their students from predators like RIAA, either by IT means, enforcement or policies. Perhaps we should be posting such valuable insights about IT safety at places like CollegeConfidential. e.g. "College X had 14 students mugged by the RIAA last year." Also it would be interesting to find out if any of the suicides or beserkers had RIAA extortion letters.

Although some kids may need to reign in their activities, the RIAA methods' technological and litigation basis are unsound and dangerous. RIAA and their overlords need to be made recipocally accountable with the colleges taking more responsibility too.

I wouldn't be surprised if they "leaked" this article to misinform people to their detection methods. If you think this is their whole routine, then you let your guard down on other levels. Or it could be directed at Limewire. What better way to take out adversaries than "focus fire them"?
"We find people using scripting methods mining Limewire data". People shy away from Limewire./dust off hands
Well one down.

In collecting evidence for those takedown notices, Media Sentry investigators do not usually download suspect music files. Instead, the company uses special software to check the "hash," a sort of unique digital fingerprint, of each offered file to verify that it is identical to a copyrighted song file in the RIAA's database.

What is this all about? It makes it sound like they have a checksum for the digital recording of each RIAA song, and compare it against the files on the P2P system. But there are an unlimited number of files that a given song might be made into, by using different formats, bitrates, encoders settings, ID3 tags, and so on. What exactly are these hashes of?

"In collecting evidence for those takedown notices, Media Sentry investigators do not usually download suspect music files. Instead, the company uses special software to check the "hash," a sort of unique digital fingerprint, of each offered file to verify that it is identical to a copyrighted song file in the RIAA's database. In the rare cases in which the hashes don't match, the investigators download the song and use a software program sold by Audible Magic to compare the sound waves of the offered audio file against those of the song it may be infringing upon. If the Audible Magic software still doesn't turn up a match, then a live person will listen to the song."

In other words, they do not engage in unauthorized downloading and copyright infringement. Except when they do. Because they what sounds to them like a really good rationalization for their behavior.

Which is exactly what their victims do.

If the RIAA being straight arrows, they'd forego the downloading in those "rare" cases. Why is it so important to nail these "rare" that they will compromise their own principles?

Perhaps, if the truth were known, those "rare" cases aren't really all that rare.

1. MediaSentry is a customer of Audible Magic software, the software in which Dr. Jacobson has an indirect financial interest, and uses Audible Magic software as part of its investigation. So when Dr. Jacobson testifies about how reliable MediaSentry is, he's talking about his customer, and when he testified that he doesn't know what their procedures are, he was lying.

2. The software process used by MediaSentry differs markedly from the way Richard Gabriel has sought to describe it in his representations to various courts.

3. Cara Duckworth, the RIAA's spokesperson, admits that

the RIAA can tell only when a song is being offered for users to illegally download; investigators have no way of knowing when someone else is actually downloading the song.

A lot of good artists do do their own publishing, and I enjoy buying their CDs, knowing that a substantial portion of the money (~50%) goes to the band. Since they rarely tour through my area, I have to support them somehow!

Small music venues are being targeted [suntimes.com] in Chicago; it appears that the city wants to make sure the only live music shows are in large arenas. Who benefits? Let's see. No more opportunities for independent artists to perform. Hmmm, guess the only way to hear live music is to go to a huge arena to see some crappy pop act produced by riaa minions. So are laws like this being proposed in other cities? Is Chicago just the start? Is this the next step in music industry dominance?

That's the real reason behind these suits. They can't possibly be afraid you'll hear top 40 crap, because if they did they wouldn't let the radio (easily sampled to better than iTunes or MP3 quality) play them.

It isn't Britney they want to keep out of your ears, it's the indies. Note they don't say "illegal downloads" except when the context infers that all downloads are illegal? Their aim, mostly met, it to make you think they do indeed have a monopoly (or rather, cartel) and that all music is RIAA music. it worked on you, didn't it?

"Piracy" isn't hurting their sales and they know it. The indies (and the gasoline and food companies) are eating their lunch. Most of us have only so many dollars to spend. If I buy four $5 CDs from the band that plays at the bar (professionally recorded and duplicated, with art and packaging) that's twenty dollars I don't have to buy an RIAA CD.

Their only hope for survival is to kill the internet. Good luck with that.

I don't see why anyone would make that assumption. The larger the group, the more intelligent people will be in that group, and the higher the likelyhood that some of them will be exceptionally intelligent.

But by the same token, the larger the group, the more idiots will be in that group, and the higher the likelyhood that some of them will be exceptionally stupid.

That also follows for competence.

The larger the group, the greater the need for organization. Above a certain critical limit, the bureaucracy bogs the effectiveness down.

The indies (and the gasoline and food companies) are eating their lunch. Most of us have only so many dollars to spend. If I buy four $5 CDs from the band that plays at the bar (professionally recorded and duplicated, with art and packaging) that's twenty dollars I don't have to buy an RIAA CD.

I agree. In addition, this is one big reason why their "lost sales" calculations are huge stinking loads of bull manure. The RIAA figures that 1 song downloaded (regardless of the legality of the download) equals one sale not made which means that much revenue not put in their pockets. You could easily use the same reasoning to prove that Indie labels cost the record labels money. Or that food store sales cost the record companies money. Or that oil companies cost the record companies money.

Hey, there's an idea. Pit the Big Oil companies against the Big Record Companies/RIAA. Two Companies Enter! One leaves! We won't really be cheering for a winner so much as cheering for one of the companies to be beaten to a pulp.

Why exactly is it nontaxable? Any income that isn't specifically excluded by code is considered to be taxable. Just because the income is illegal or of dubious legality does not exempt it from taxation. Perhaps the most famous case being Al Capone being toppled by the IRS.

Good thing that you're not my accountant. That's just bad legal and tax advice.As far as I know, taxation of civil judgments is common. Certain awards are probably excluded from income, but not to the extent you seem to think so.

PeerGuardian is to protection what "safe periods" are to prevention. If they have any clue at all, they've got IP blocks under some unknown subsidiary, rented boxes in colos or using anonymizing whois registrars. Maybe they're happy to target the 90% easiest targets, but it's by no means safe as such.

Do you honestly, really, truly believe that the RIAA has any clue at all? They're harvesting IPs off of limewire. They might as well put up a sign up sheet on their website saying "We're now on the Honor System for internet downloads. Please fill out this form, including your bank account number and the number of songs you have downloaded, and we'll just bill you for it."

Peerguardian is better than nothing. But not by a lot. It maybe keeps the MafIAA from spotting you from their own IP address, but sometimes they neglect to inform PG when the IP numbers change. The MafIAA is perfectly capable of getting online via their local cable system (or one in Russia, for that matter, the tubes go everywhere), or registering a domain under an assumed name, or doing it from their mom's basement.

First, all Gnutella clients are the same for their purposes; it's one network. Second, tons of people still use LimeWire for whatever reason.It may be a fairly straightforward system, but it's also potentially quite effective. The point of the Gnutella network is to search the network, and people label files to help searchers find them (otherwise, little point in sharing). Harness that and collect IPs from them, and you have a list of potential infringers. Sure, there are plenty of ways to "beat the system"